A lot of comments in this thread are assuming that the “smart” engineers aren’t self aware enough to realize what they are doing. Let me suggest more provocati

A lot of comments in this thread are assuming that the “smart” engineers aren’t self aware enough to realize what they are doing. Let me suggest more provocatively that what we often are witnessing is power dynamics. And these people being smart know how to let this play out using code. This is probably less applicable to OPs case than let’s say a large engineering organization in a large corp. My pragmatic suggestion in such cases is to push back where it would affect your work or growth directly and let go of the rest. Smart people are scary good at lawyering their way out of situations or tying you down in endless litigation. There’s no “solution” to this. Power dynamics are a part of life and code isn’t immune.